If you’ve been buying or selling items on Facebook Marketplace recently, you may have seen an optional field in the “Item for Sale” screen that says “SKU”, but what does this mean? SKU is the abbreviation for Stock Keeping Unit. On Facebook Marketplace, a SKU is a convenient way to keep track of what products you’re selling.
What is a Stock Keeping Unit? (SKU)
Stock Keeping Unit is a number (usually comprised of 8 alphanumeric digits) that allows professional or high-volume sellers to internally keep track of their stock or inventory levels for the products they are selling on Marketplace.
An example of a seller using SKU’s: Imagine there is a seller selling two types of t-shirt’s, red shirts and blue shirts. All red T-Shirts will have a SKU that is different from the T-Shirts that are blue. See the photo below for how this might work in practice.
What happens if I don’t include a SKU in my Facebook Marketplace listing?
SKU’s are completely optional and used only internally if you have many products. You do not need to include SKU’s when you create a listing. The SKU is only visible to the seller, buyers will not see the SKU.
If you’re selling many products and could benefit from a custom store, it’s usually best to create your own Shopify store so that you have complete control over all aspects of your store.